symptoms of a once loved mind
by Aiko Isari
Summary: You are Vamdemon's Chosen. That's all you need to know. Part 2 of 'our infinity'


_Warning for violence, brainwashing, poison, and death._

* * *

You are Vamdemon's Chosen.

You know it the second you touch dirt. When your knees hit the ground stinging, you cry. You cry out in surprise until a small cat head finds you and laughs in your face. The laugh is bitter.

"Tears aren't allowed here," she says, and slaps them out of you with her tail, even though you weren't really crying out in the first place.

Vamdemon is gentle with you. He even says his name politely, despite never really asking for yours. The servants are not. They mock or ignore you. You never see the cat head again after the first day, but there's a dog instead who doesn't seem to see you slumped there, eyes full of wonder.

That first day, Vamdemon decides to be gentle that way. He decides not to kill you outright, rather, he shows you his books and teaches you how to read his words and chant the spells and when he does there is a strange energy in your skin for many days after.

So you practice to keep it there. He seems to be in a better mood on those days.

On some days you are more tired than ever. On those days, he talks to you, talks like you are too stupid to see what he's actually doing. Too stupid to understand that he is evil and insane and vile. Talks like you are the only person who wants to listen to his dreams.

It's like he's in love with you or something.

On other days you are full of energy, enough to go outside and watch for the other humans that might be near by. You know you should feel a desire to go home, as the children certainly must, as they are rumored to. You feel none of this. If you have a home, you cannot return to it, and even if you could, why would you?

 _(There is an answer to this question, but you cannot find it.)_

One day he bites you. And it does a strange thing. You do not bleed and you don't feel the blood leave you either but surely it does. Surely it goes because the vampire looks satisfied for some reason or another.

"You're a useful boy," he says to you.

And something about that statement doesn't make any sense at all.

* * *

You watch the children when their afterimages touch the ground. You watch the sky. You watch the master, the demon, your demon, pace and pace and mutter, and laugh.

He is scared. He is unhappy.

He will never admit it. You notice because he stops letting you out of his sight out of nowhere, like you will betray him and go with them back home. Go away from your kidnapper because that's the right thing to do when you're a prisoner on a leash, desire to leave. And yet you have none of this. You never say so. You like seeing him squirm a little.

For all the suffering he doles out. Because you like justice. You cannot remember why you like it. The word of it sounds good in your head, even if in reality it doesn't work that way. Sometimes it can, sure, but the longer you are here, the more uncertain you become.

 _(There is someone you once instilled the word justice in. Where are they now?)_

Your first instinct is to want to reassure him. _Want to_ , because your second instinct pulls you back, a weary smugness in the back of your throat, a fear and sorrow in your stomach. You want to reassure him, to change his path.

But neither of you do so. To care is a limited faculty. To care is a dangerous idea. Of course, you are a social being, so to avoid that is essentially impossible. But Vamdemon will never say so, and thus, neither will you. You have a feeling your partner (even now the word sends such a joyous trill up your throat) will not take kindly to it if he does.

The blue eyes in the dark watch you with disdain and envy.

* * *

The plans move and move. What these plans are, you do not know.

Vamdemon is resting for days and then awake for weeks at a time. You sleep long on some days and short on others and regardless, he drinks from you when you're not sleeping. Or perhaps, he does while you're sleeping and you simply can't tell. It's hard to keep your eyes open some of the time.

"You're fading, you know."

The puppy speaks as she paces at the entrance of the castle. It's the first words he has heard from her and he recognizes the mocking, tired drawls of the cat head who had dragged him here.

"He wants to use you as soon as possible." The pup scoffs. "Use you up, like he's going to use _them_ up."

You blink in confusion, but the pup only shrugs and looks down the warping hallway, towards the room you are never interested in going to, never interested because he does not want you to be.

For the first time, like your ears have popped at a high altitude, you hear someone screaming.

"He'll have better use for her - them- than you."

The pup's voice is not smug as she stops at a bowl of gray liquid. She drinks her poison, and goes on with her day, like everyone else here.

You realize now that the poison has been force-fed to you.

It's too late to be angry, to feel hurt, isn't it?

* * *

One day, you follow the sounds.

You've lost your irrelevant perception of time by now. It has not passed for you and it will continue to not pass for you. It cannot.

This revelation has come slowly for you and the reasoning for that is stuck like chewing gum to a desk. You stop thinking, again, and let instinct go on.

You follow the sounds. On this day, the screams turn to whimpers. They turn to desperate sobs and broken baby cries. Just like the sleeping noises of the puppy on the stone floor. How have you not noticed any of these things?

 _(He is doing this all for you. All of these horrible things. They are all for you and how can that be wrong?)_

You can't answer yourself, but you can push open a door and look upon the figure strapped down. Small, nothing but wisps in a flesh body that is trying to die. Brown hair, eyes that might have been the same color before the child came here, but were now glittering rubies in the light of the many hovering candles.

She stares at you. Her expression is that of roadkill. She watches, her mouth closed. Then her brows knit.

"A person." She says. "Why are you here? Did they capture you too?"

"A long time ago," you say. Even though your brain and heart thump to tell you that that simply isn't true, that you somehow know better. You were dragged here, captured. It just wasn't relevant anymore. "They're not afraid of me now. They're afraid of you."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

You don't know many things, but you cannot tell that to this little girl. Not when she can't possibly know any better than you. You're not a child, after all, are you?

 _"You're a good boy."_

Your world splits in two.

The rubies glow with a mind of their own. "I'm Hikari," she says, and her little ghost-voice is somehow shrill and painful and cold. "Who are you?"

You search your brain and it aches with love and sorrow and the thought of a child younger than this little girl. Of a pale friend who you miss very much out of nowhere, a wife and a father who don't understand your eccentricities but accept them warily, out of fear of losing you.

"Hiroki," you say gently. "Hida Hiroki."

The world as you know it shatters, and you remember what it once was.

Then, the air is rent with terrible howls, and they are coming from your lips.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** _ Did anybody see that one coming? Please let me know what you think in the review box below! By the way if you haven't read 'a sky with millions of scars', please do. It adds to the fun.

Challenges: Diversity Writing Challenge C41. write in second person narration, and Halloween Trick or Treat Bag day 17. Write about a hidden identity.


End file.
